


Crosslives

by Kentrakshi (Sartorially), shatterbrained (fabricatedMiracles)



Series: Lives [1]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Another Terrible School AU, Blood, Dead People, F/F, F/M, Ghosts, M/M, Magic and Stuff, Mediums, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychometry, Tags May Change, Teenage Pregnancy, Trans Jake English, accidental murder, aube's probably going to sink some popular ships because they hate them, can you already tell aube is super chatty, i warned you, what the hell was i thinking when i said i'd write this story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-08 15:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1947144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sartorially/pseuds/Kentrakshi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabricatedMiracles/pseuds/shatterbrained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>THIS WORK WILL LIKELY NEVER BE COMPLETED. PLEASE HEED THIS WARNING BEFORE GETTING ATTACHED.</p><p>They say that there’s nothing after death. At the same time, there is nothing to be found when stepping over the gender barrier. What if, somewhere on the outskirts of nothing… two men came to a crossroads? And, with time, were able to move past the impossibility of their situations?</p><p>What happens when a dead man and a medium with an emotional attachment to the violently murdered cross (after)lives?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The (Psycho)metric System

**Author's Note:**

> hi, this is aube (shatterbrained)! welcome to crosslives. i type all in lowercase; kentra's got decent conventions, so you can tell real easy who’s who! in case you didn't read the tags and have something against trans people for some reason (no idea why you would, though, they are faaaantastic friends!), jake is dfab in this work. just a waaaarning. also, i like the number four, and the color purple, and art, and writing, and eggplants, and ghosts, and unnecessary lists, and immense amounts of polysyndeton, and big, eloquent speeches that are actually pointless in the end…. You are loved, anyhow. yeyeyeye
> 
> Howdy, this here is Kentra (kentrakshi). I type differently, dur, and tend to use periods more often. yeah, well, fuck you, because commas are great, and so are semicolons; clearly, i type the way i talk − everything is one big run-on sentence with pauses for oxygen here and there lelelele. Thank you, darlin’. Again, this features a transgender character. Not to be confused with a transsexual character.
> 
> If that bugs you, kindly jam your opinion up your arse and fuck off thusly. There is also, for those who don’t read tags, blood, death, teenage pregnancy, and a whole shitload of stuff that is not indicative of your usual fluff piece.
> 
> we’ll tag those bits as they come, we promise. in the chapter notes, if it spoils anything.
> 
> anyway, we are done talking now, otherwise we’ll go on fooooreeeeveeeer.
> 
> 4ever, even.
> 
> 14th July - Tags updated.

The house wasn't old, and it wasn't abandoned, per se; a family had lived there, but had left due to a series of events that had them packing and leaving the town in a hurry. So the property had been sold, sold to some company to build a department store or a strip mall.

However, any person that had any wits about them knew darn well that there were _clearly_ spirits inside that building, and if they weren't taken care of, they'd become so much harder to free from the property.

Such was the nature of the dead.

That, however, was where Jake English came into the picture.

He came into the picture about how you would expect. Standing at the rusted, creaking gate, hands on his hips while he looked up at the imposing target of the night.

His skin − rich caramel − was barely visible in the shadows that the old oak blocking the bright half moon was casting, and he was grateful for that as a car passed, headlights illuminating the area briefly. His fingers twitched a bit in the coolness of the late evening air, and were stuffed into the pockets of his shorts within seconds.

A creak, probably from the gate that was directly beside him. His thumbs tapped against his generous hips, with Jake looking around curiously. So _this_ was the − often circulated about via gossip − spot for all daring young couples to swing by, and prove their mettle. You know. Before the construction began, the spooky factor was removed, and replaced by a Starbucks or something of its ilk.

Taking off his shoes and socks to cram them into his backpack, which sat beside him on the well-trodden path, he took a deep breath and wiggled his toes in the grass that populated and thrived in the area just before the path began. It was odd that it hadn’t been trampled away. It grew tall, creating a bit of a barrier about the property.

This was going to be an ordeal, he mused as he swung his backpack on. There was sorrow here, and Jake's psychometric perceptions, here at the front gate, were already intense. They were thick enough to be cut into slices by a knife, and a dull one, at that.

The pain here had been either prolonged or severe, but, until he touched the structure, there would be no way to tell.

Stepping forward, but looking over his shoulder, he whistled a low note, and received a cheerful, but quiet, bark from Buddha, his big white Samoyed. The faithful canine trotted on up to sit beside his master, ready to stand guard. What Jake was doing was considered trespassing, but he'd never been caught, never while Buddha was keeping watch for him. Jake's rule was that if no one caught you doing it and you were following the best rule in the world, "do no harm", you were totally fine. With the fluffy dog watching, his chances of getting caught were significantly lowered.

A little smoochy noise, and the white cat Jake (and his roommate, Roxy) kept, Ayce, was on his shoulder, having scrambled up his back. There were a few pricks from sharp claws along his back, but that was something he had long since gotten used to.

His companions in position, the young medium moved forward through the grass. And then onto the packed dirt of the path that led to the front door.

On the porch stairs, his hand on the worn metal handrail-type thing, his chest tightened (it was a different sort of tightness than that of his binder, he could tell), and he heaved a sigh. It came out a little more emotional than he’d meant it to be.

He was. Sadder, now.

Brushing that aside, he crouched as a car passed, hiding in the shadows of the creaking porch as his hands − gloved with a pair of thin and worn leather gloves, so as to not leave prints − tested the knob.

 _Click-click_.

Locked. Odd, considering the urban myths about this place, but not a problem.

Sliding over to the window, Jake tested the lock there.

 _A-ha!_ Broken.

Pushing the window up, he let Ayce hop into the building, then entered behind her, careful to angle his hips so he wouldn’t get stuck there. He had this awful tendency to forget the wideness of his hips and get himself wedged in places rather awkwardly. Rolling to his feet once he was in, he crept over to the door and unlocked it, just in case he needed to escape quickly.

You never could be _too_ careful when walking about obviously haunted buildings.

Retrieving his flashlight, he tiptoed into the kitchen, following the cat.

It would have sounded stupid to anyone else, but Jake knew, with the most accurate certainty, that Ayce was a witch’s cat. Familiar with the dead (and actually borrowed from Roxy Lalonde, the local witch and Jake’s beloved roommate), she could sense spirits much more sharply than he could. Thusly, the real leader of these excursions was the feline.

Trusting blindly in the animal, he was led to a few different places in the house. The kitchen, where a pair of young spirits were intensely making out. Nearby, he spotted two sets of sneakers. It was easy enough to scribble a simple mark on the left toes of each. Once they were sealed within, he moved to the window to throw them out. No longer bound to the site of their deaths, they laced fingers, soon vanishing in a gentle glow of light.

Ayce strode on, leading him over a carpet with floorboards that creaked. They must have really gotten soaked, to be so warped and sensitive to shifting. There’s a sudden sensation. A wetness between his caramel toes. He could _almost_ smell copper in the air… But the feline left him no time to wonder at it.

Up the stairs then, and Ayce froze, slowly retreating once Jake’s bare feet reached the carpet before the master bedroom.

“What’s up, Ayce? Someth−”

It struck him then. Fury. Jealousy. And a love that made him ache. It hung like a mist about the faded metal of the knob. His fingers rested on it gently, against the coolness that seemed to burn his flesh.

Nothing further than that came. The door was acting as a barrier to the psychometric sensations that lingered inside. Looking to the cat that now sat at the far end of the hall, Jake swallowed thickly. There was something, some memory, on the other side of that door, in that room, that was unpleasant… He wasn’t quite sure how much of it he wanted to experience.

However, that would be beyond his control.

“Ayce,” Jake murmured. That was the way to keep the familiar’s bond with him active. Given that he was not a witch, or kin of one, but only a medium with a “borrowed” companion: by saying its name when he addressed it, he was able to relay instructions properly. “Watch me. If something happens to me, tell Roxy. If it’s a demon, get Dirk and Jane. If I leave that room, follow me.”

He received a slow blink, by way of response, and nothing more. That was more of a cat mannerism than anything else, and so it was dismissed as an “affirmative”.

There’s not a peep from outside, where the big Samoyed stood guard and fanned his tail over the packed dirt of the path, watching with a fierce determination. If the medium wanted to get a better look at the master bedroom, now was the time to do it.

Gripping the knob, Jake turned it with a squeak, then stepped inside.

Immediately, he was gripped by a memory. It was a heavy one, filled more with sensation and emotion than detail. He began to live it, moving as though it were his own. Through eyes that were not his own, he looked into the past to observe a horrible happening. One of violence, fear, and destruction. Even though he was utterly aware that all that he lived through was merely a memory, with no repercussions on the present, Jake was prepared to live through every second of it, with no hope for escape.

It began in a truck. The color, the model, the plate number. All was a mystery. All he knew was that it was familiar, and there was a passenger to the right.

She was a beautiful girl. Like many other details, her name escaped him. Her hair, a lovely red, fell into her face. With ease, she puffed the strands back into place. A large hand reached out, tucked hair behind one creamy ear. It earned the driver a giggle while he parked, and in Jake’s chest, love swelled.

The memory distorted briefly, flashing to a walk up the very same stairs that Jake had journeyed up. Her perfectly manicured hand slid over the banister, with the other clasped in a warmer, larger version of the same appendage. He bent at the waist, pushed their lips together. She tasted of cherries. Must be her lipgloss.

“Mmmm, I love you, Derrick. I love you so much more than I love anyone else.” She smiled wide at him, their feet meeting with the final step at roughly the same time. They had not reached the bedroom, where the singular audience stood, waiting for the memory to catch up to him. “How much do you love me? How much, huh?”

Jake was not a spectator here.

In that instant, he _was_ Derrick. He was a man that had to duck into the bedroom, for fear of hitting his head on the doorframe. And it was strange, but he felt good. It felt good to be Derrick.

But then... why the sorrow? Jake was confused. Due to his years of experience in the art of watching the spiritually bound die, he deduced that Derrick had killed her. Murdered this nameless girl, even if that did not seem to fit with the utter adoration that bubbled up in the chest of the memory’s master.

The door was toed shut by the man in the past, and the man in the present. Derrick led her to the bed, bent to kiss her again, and again. “More’n life, sweetheart. I love ya more’n I love anythin’ else; even breathin’.” His words were gentle, clashing with the sheer size and power of his body. His words were sincere, rising from the depths of his heart.

“...Really? That much?” she asked. It was a simple response, but laced with a tone of voice that was disbelieving. She slowly unbuttoned her blouse, let it drop to the floor while she pressed him back, onto the bed. “Are you telling me the truth, Derr?”

“‘Course. I’d give m’life for ya.” He flopped down without much urging, letting her push his polo off. Those soft, soft hands slid over his toned back, up to cup his face. Thumbs brushed at high cheekbones, palms rubbed at an unshaven jaw. “I’d take a bullet, a sword, a knife. Jus’ for ya.”

Derrick’s hands slid to her hips, guiding her to rest on top of him. Her thighs squished pleasantly against his waist, flesh far cooler than his own. Jake became acutely aware of just how _warm_ this man was. It was like he was on fire. Logically, that meant a high body temperature, but that didn’t prevent his awe.

The medium stood beside the bed, eyes unfocused. His ears perked at the voice of the girl, and the soft creak of a drawer that came shortly thereafter.

“...Why don’t we test that, my love?”

Slowly, Jake maneuvered to lay on the mattress, his body heavy, limbs leaden as he took the place the memory demanded in order to carry on. It creaked awkwardly while he shifted to lay in the center. Obviously, he did not take up the same amount of space that Derrick did, but he was in the same spot nonetheless.

Had the drawer shut again? He was too busy looking into her wide, pretty eyes, filled with all the love that he _knew_ they shared. He laughed a little, the sound deep and rolling, when one hand was raised up.

Derrick’s, and Jake’s, gaze traveled up the length of that creamy arm, tracing up the shadows to her hand. In an instant, they locked with the knife in her grasp. It was an ordinary thing, maybe fetched from a kitchen. Polished and sharp and slowly coming down. The point rested against his chest.

It pricked his skin just a little when the laughter started again. Nervous, halting laughter, slightly grating, less like its former distant thunder and more like the grating of gravel.

“T- Test?”

“Mmhm. Because I want to know _just_ how much you love me.”

That was the single warning.

Because her hand lifted high again. Because it hovered briefly. Because then it came down, and the knife plunged into Derrick’s chest so forcefully that the very breath in his lungs was stolen away.

The metal was cold, burning like ice within the heated torso of the man on the bed.

Jake gasped in agony, crying out, his hand touching a bloodless, unwounded chest with the same pain as Derrick touched his in the memory, the palm and fingers coming away from his bare chest soaked with blood. His finger tingled, having slide against the blade. Another wound, producing blood that welled up and mingled.

The medium arched his back up, chest forcing itself up until his sternum, and Derrick’s, were in roughly the same place. The pain was theirs, together. Jake’s emotions, formerly untouched, were bound to Derrick’s memory. The confusion and pain lingering in the building, in the bare mattress, it was all coming into him and letting the young man in the present understand the shock, the terror, the utter sense of betrayal that existed in the man from the past.

It fell to the bed from her nerveless grasp. Her fingers pressed against her face, one smeared with his essence, and the other clean. Her breathing hitched, breaking off into a sob. She stammered something unintelligible, with it soon becoming words.

“Oh my _God_.”

He looked at the knife, then at her, watched the tears starting to make their tracks down her cheeks. Her chest hitched again, eyes growing wider with the terror of _what she had just done_. Her hand fluttered down to press against his chest, to try and stop the bleeding. But the wound was too much, and the red was _everywhere_.

“Oh my God, Derr. Derrick, oh my _God_.”

He was dying. His breath was coming short, his mind struggling to understand. He didn’t want to die.

And Jake, living in an instant replay, didn’t want him to die either, because the pains of the dying were overwhelming to the teenager, barely into his last year of school. He was too young. Too young to die, even in a memory, but he had already died before, so many times, in the place of misguided ghosts.

When Derrick’s mouth opened, all that left him ( _them_ , Jake noted, his throat scraping out the same sound) was the loudest scream that Jake had ever experienced. His eyes fluttered for a second in utter pain. He pleaded with her. He begged with her, with sobs that had no words, until he mustered the strength to _look_ at her again.

Her voice was fuzzy. Distant.

“Derrick, _no_ , you can’t go. You can’t! You can’t _leave me_ , you can’t leave _my baby_ , _our baby_ , Derrick!”

His limbs were heavy.

He couldn’t… _They_ couldn’t _breathe_.

“ _This wasn’t supposed to happen!_ ” She was shrieking, eyes streaming with her fear. “It wasn’t supposed to _go that deep_. I didn’t. I didn’t _mean_ to−”

His voice shook, a mere echo of itself now. It was the only assurance that he could provide her at this moment. A very soft, barely uttered murmur.

“I love ya.”

Even thinking about gasping was impossible now. Eyes streaming, fingers curling into the sheets that stained with his blood. Derrick sagged, no energy left to drag himself through one more moment of life. There was nothing left.

Jake lay still, dead with Derrick, if only for a moment, before he moved, shifting into _her_ place now, mindlessly, to carry on the memory in which he was living from a different perspective.

All that he could feel was the terror of it all. The fear, and the guilt that was already weighing on her slim shoulders. It was all she could do not to scream, and, dropping the knife to the ground, she tried once again, to wake him. She did her best, doing all the things that should have made him open his eyes and smile again, but there was nothing.

Amber glass eyes. Blank. And gazing at something just behind her, somewhere in the darkness.

The tears fell. Dropped on his torso, on the cooling blood. She looked to the knife, then to his face. Unable to draw another breath without the sobs breaking through, the young girl bent to press her lips against his.

Just one last kiss.

She collapsed on top of him. Her fingers ran through his styled hair, streaking blood through it. It was so petty, all those fights they’d had when she’d told him his hair looked stupid. All those times when he’d laughed at her bedhead in response, earning a kick in the shin.

Who knows how long she laid there? She finally, finally sat up, looking down at all that was left of Derrick Strider. Only then did the panic seize her once more. And she was looking to the knife. To the blood, to the wound in his chest. And then, to her belly, where a barely discernible bump was.

In that instant, she knew. She had to hide him. To hide what she had done. _It had been an accident._ But, what if someone found out? What if they put her in prison?

_What if they took her baby away?_

Her baby. The only thing that she had _left_.

Before she even fully thought it through, she was leaping off the bed, running to the door. Shaky hands on the knob, turning it with a few slips, attributed to the blood coating and slicking up her digits. The door was pulled open, her head poking out to look around. For what? She didn’t know.

But then she was hurrying to the bed again, grabbing Derrick’s wrist and straining with all she had to pull him off the mattress. When his body hit the floor, it was with a sickening cracking noise. But there was no time to experience horror anymore. Her thoughts were caught on her baby. On _their baby_. On the child that was her only reminder of the dead man she was dragging into the hallway.

In the present, Jake found himself moving just as she had, straining with a load that he was not actually bearing in the present.

At the stairs, she pushed with all her might to send him rolling down. The exertion left her dizzy, hands staining the ancient wood of the banister while she steadied herself. By the time that she reached his body again, there was a rapidly forming pool of blood about him.

Hands at his wrist. Jerking, pulling struggling to get him somewhere that no one would look. She didn’t have _time_ to bury him, or burn him, or properly disguise what she’d done. (Briefly, she soothed herself with the knowledge of how often people came here, with the number being zero.) Looking about the entryway, she found her eyes alighting on the kitchen.

The kitchen led to the pantry, which then led to the basement.

It was only through sheer force of will that Derrick’s body finally made it to the top of the stairs. Then, with a final heave, she shoved him.

 _Thump-thump-thump-thump_ he went, finally landing heavily at the base of the stairs. His head flopped to the side, eyes focused up at her again. This time, with him _looking_ at her like that, she couldn’t hold it in. The basement door slammed shut, and she was tripping to the long unused sink to empty her stomach into it.

The memory faded into darkness.

Jake shook himself, on the basement stairs, and came away from the recollection, heart aching.

“Oh, _Lord_.”

And he went down the stairs, down into the blackness, without a light, and then, then, _thud_.

Jake’s bare toe hit something hard, drawing a vicious curse from the teen, and down went the medium. He tumbled into something that cut and scraped him, hitting the floor and whatever was on it and crying out in pain.

Scrambling to his feet, he located his flashlight on his beltstrap, where he had instinctively replaced it at some point.

Scanning around, the beam came to rest on what had tripped Jake: one human skull, large, well-formed, and in surprisingly nice condition. The teeth were all still in their places, and the sockets didn’t have much beyond dust and an old cobweb or two inside them.

Sweeping the light over what had cut him, Jake came to the realization that he was sitting on − no, _in_ − Derrick’s rib cage, and had been poked sharply in the arm by his fifth rib and cut a bit on the sternum, which was broken off at an odd angle, presumably due to the sharp force trauma that had killed him.

Carefully extricating himself from the skeleton, he checked himself over for any major injuries before shining his light around for the skull again. Encountering a few stray bugs and his own bruised toes, it took him a minute, but once he’d found the bony structure, he scooped it up, then began his trek back up to the room that had started this whole mess.

Bumping the door shut, and then sitting on the edge of the bed with the skull beside him, Jake inquired in the blackness, turning off the light, “Is anyone here with me?”

There’s a very soft creaking from the bed, like someone was rolling onto their side. The voice that Jake heard groan softly was deep, the same as the voice that had sobbed out pleas. It echoed all about the room, managing to sound sad, fearful, and _angry_.

Jake shivered, not from fear, but from the sudden presence that joined him in the room, that startled him. But he had nothing to fear; Ayce was in the hall and Buddha was outside.

There’s not a word spoken. Only the presence. The nearness of someone who no longer lived. The skull shifted, jostled by a touch that Jake could not glimpse just yet. The right parietal lobe rested against his thigh, as did the beginnings of the jaw.

“...Ya’re not dead.” A long pause followed that statement. “Why are ya here?” The confusion was evident.

“Because,” Jake said, voice as pleasant as he could manage to keep it, “It’s my job to communicate with spirits. I help get their messages out to the living, and I tell their stories. I help them move on to the next life, and I feel memories that aren’t mine. Now, if I have another purpose, someone let me know! I haven’t found that one quite yet.”

The creaking sounded again. Derrick’s spirit was a heavy one, displacing the bed quite obviously. The skull shifted again, rolling onto its other side, away from Jake. “S’real nice of ya t’do that. Were ya born like that?” The ghost seemed genuinely interested in the medium who was seated on his literal deathbed.

“...An’ who sent ya here?”

“I was indeed born that way, and no one sent me here, sir! But there’s a crew coming to get rid of this place soon, coming to build some sort of store on the land, and if the spirits aren’t cleared out, they get stuck here forever, and I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be trapped in a store for the rest of eternity!” The teenager quipped, shrugging a moment before adjusting his binder discreetly.

Derrick gave the illusion of taking a breath. Then, with a tone that was far more childish than it should have been, he spoke again. “...Ya’know. I’unno why she killed me. I don’t un’erstand it. All th’movies say that I gotta un’erstand, so I can move on.”

A sigh. “I loved her. Why’d she kill me?”

From outside, a faint movement was audible; a digging sound, and the panting of a canine, could be made out if Jake concentrated hard enough, which he didn’t do for long, turning his mind back to the spirit he was speaking to.

Jake bit at his lower lip for a moment, “She was frightened, Derrick.”

“Why? An’ how do ya know that?” He sounded like a child, incessant and pushy and demanding.

“Because I saw it, through your eyes, and then through hers. She wanted to tell you something. And you won’t find out, if you stay here.”

The breathing sound vanished. The bed was no longer occupied, and there’s a hammering of fists on the door. However, Derrick’s spirit could not open it. He was locked inside the master bedroom, with no hope for escape without some sort of assistance.

He was frantic, now, “I have t’get _out_. I have. I gotta find ‘er. A baby… She said somethin’. ‘Bout a baby. Said it was _ours_!”

_Bang, bang, bang, bang!_

Jake jumped to his feet, skull in his hands, and he spoke over Derrick’s panicked force, his voice accented, crisp, and firmly determined. “Calm down. I can help you get out. I promise. I’ve done it before. You’ll be somewhere much better than here… We can find her together!”

In Jake’s grasp, the skull slowly warmed, and Derrick’s voice faded to a whisper. A soft, soft whisper, in the back of the medium’s mind.

“Get me outta here.”

With the skull tucked against his chest, Jake shoved the door open, and hurried down the stairs Ayce on his heels. Outside, he could hear Buddha scratching at the front door. His gaze dropped, and he realized instantly that there was no way he could take _this_ portion of Derrick’s body with him.

He needed something smaller.

So around he turned, tripping down the stairs to the basement. One misstep, and he might have impaled himself on the remains, which grew hot to the touch with the desperation of the dead man.

 _Thunk_ went the skull, while shaky, richly-tanned hands scrabbled about for something.

Jake’s fingers were closing around a thin piece − maybe a finger bone − shoving it into his pocket. Up the stairs, with one shin bruising horribly against the landing. The door slammed shut, aided by an unseen hand.

Buddha was barking.

It was time to go.


	2. The Big S4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jake goes back to school, and dave strider contemplates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> abloo-bloo. we bring you the second chapter of crosslives, hot off the digital press, now with proper coding and span classes!
> 
> enjoy! look at the end notes for bonus pieces pertaining to this chapter. they'll be there by saturday. at least _on the origin of magics_ will be, given kentra's situation.
> 
> Looks like it worked. Holy shit. We did it, Aube. We climbed the whole mountain.
> 
> more like we climbed the second stair. this is only chapter two. we have miles to go before we sleep.
> 
> For any who cares, I will _not be here_ by the time anyone reads this fuckery. I'm going on a trip and meeting people who are journeying to the US of A. Fucking spectacular. I'll be back within two weeks, but please. Please, please, please, _please_ comment so that Aube's got something to do while I've flown the coop.

Leaving the campus of the Skaia School of Supernatural Studies, better known as the S4, was an ordeal, but getting back in was a lot easier, if not a lot less sanitary. Jake mused as he walked, shining his light around the sewage tunnel that he was in. Thankful for his galoshes, he kept to the stony ledges on the left, not wanting to fall into a hole like he had the first few times (which was absolutely horrid, and had once landed him in the infirmary with some odd magical disease).

_Beep-beep!_

Pulling out his phone and stopping to slide his flashlight into his backpack’s specially designed shoulder strap, Jake pulled up Pesterchum.

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering golgothasTerror [GT] 

TG: jakeycake there u r  
TG: my rad tracking skillz r loCATing u  
TG: heehee  
TG: welcome back to the s4  
TG: how was it out there on the outside  
GT: Chilly. It seems to be fall out there even though its always pleasant in here on campus.  
GT: I need to check the calendar next time i travel out.  
TG: jake u loser u always say that  
TG: n e way hurry up  
GT: Im just about to hit the crosspipe. Mind dropping the rope from the grate rolal?  
GT: Ill be sure to pack my galoshes into my sylladex for later cleaning.  
TG: praise because omg ur boots REEK LIKE SHIT  
TG: totes lit there  
TG: N E WAY i dropped the rope so ill let u come up before u suffocate down there btw ayce and buddha made it back b4 u  
GT: Thank you! Im sure they did theyre a lot faster than i am on their four trusty paws.

Sliding his phone back into his pocket, he moved forward, careful to step up on the ledge that he knew came just before the four-way intersection. So many ledges down here. So many.

And there was Roxy’s glowing rope. Bright pink and hand-braided from some strange fiber, it was the strongest rope that Jake had ever used. Gripping it firmly, he pulled hard to let Roxy know he was there, and there was a grunt up above, faintly audible, as his roommate hauled him up.

Captchaloguing his galoshes, he waited as he was pulled up, looking down at the beam of his flashlight and watching it get smaller and smaller until he heard Roxy hiss, “Gimme ya’ hand, Jakey!”

Reaching up and papping around, he found Roxy’s hand soon enough. The young man was pulled out of the manhole, and the rope was captchalogued the moment Jake let go, drawn into Roxy’s sylladex with a cheerful little zzzzip!

As Jake shut the manhole cover, careful to not let his fingers catch under it, Roxy recovered from her exertion, fanning herself in the moonlight.

“So, find anythin’ good, Mista’ Medium?”

“Indeed! I’ve actually got myself a little ghosty friend now! His story’s rather complex, and I’m going to find out what the snazzle is on him.” Jake responded. “Now, we’d better hurry! We need to skitter on back to the room lest a prowling teacher catch us about! Not every teacher is as forgiving of sneaky students as Mindfang.”

Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, a troll, former pirate, and now one of the witchcraft teachers, had actually praised Roxy’s life signature masking spell, and had let them hurry back to their room without any trouble. However, if it hadn’t been her night to patrol the halls, who knows what sort of trouble they could have gotten themselves into?

Roxy nodded, clambering up to her feet, and said, “Yeah, s’true. We better get goin’.”

The journey across campus to their quarters in Blackwood Tower was, thankfully, uneventful. Their dormitory, still due for a recalibration after the summer vacation, was the second door on the right from the window at the end of the hall. It was never locked, to their hands, and Roxy held the door as Jake slipped in, then came in behind him and carefully shut the door.

The room, still set to their personalities as of the beginning of the previous school year, took the form of a small home with a greenhouse and a garden through an additional door that had appeared between the bathroom and closet. However, it just didn’t fit them the same anymore; the space seemed too small, to Jake, and God knows what Roxy thought at that point.

“So,” Roxy said, flopping on the bed and looking out their window. It was a lovely night, with the moon hanging heavy among wispy clouds. But she was a gossip, and gossips never rested: “Gimme all the deets.”

Jake sighed, laying on his bed, then turning his back to his friend and pulling the bone out of his pocket in the dark to look at it. There was a very brief little beat as it rested in his palm, and warmed. Then it was placed on his bedside table.

“Maybe tomorrow, Roxy. I had to die again tonight, and I’m tuckered out.” And that ended the conversation for the moment.

Jake remembered nothing beyond that of the night.

His next vision was made up of the dawny red and deep purple of a sunrise over Skaia.

−−−−

Dave Strider’s vision was much the same, though his was far less pleasant.

 “Ow!” Dave hissed as he examined his face in the mirror, paper-white fingertips probing a dark violet bruise around a swollen eye that only bared a sliver of a fiery-red iris.

 “What the hell is wrong with your face, Dave? I mean, more than usually. A lot is pretty fucking wrong with your ugly-ass face, but that shiner is not a little hickey like the one you were sporting last week, which, by the way, you have not told me the origin of,” the aggravating voice of Karkat Vantas rattled off, clearly annoyed and tinged with that tone of disapproval which always seemed present whenever he spoke.

“Kanaya Maryam gives great lovebites,” Dave responded, and laughed when Karkat choked.

“You slimy turd! How did Kanaya, a woman with class, find herself involved with a shitsucker of your caliber?”

The blond turned his face from the mirror, all the movement in his neck, and stuck out his tongue a moment before turning back. Slamming his hand down on the flat of his hunting knife, he flipped it over his shoulder and into the bamboo wall of their dojo. It stuck there, quivering, while the monster hunter (and warlock on the side) sniggered at the troll sorcerer having to duck out of the way.

“Fuck you is how, imitation crab.”

Producing his wand, Karkat sent a few harmless red sparks Dave’s way, but then offered, voice still grating, “I could help you out with that eye, if you like.”

Dave waved dismissively, applying something or other Kanaya had prepared for him at one time, when he had found himself bruised or sore after training or duels; it worked on nearly everything, and when he got the chance, he would have to remember to ask Kanaya to rub his back for him.

The youngest of all the Strider brothers, Dave found himself with a reputation to live up to, with his eldest brother and sister having graduated several years prior and his other two siblings two grades ahead. His younger sister (by mere hours), Rose, was presently not at the S4, instead studying abroad and residing in France with their eldest sister, and he was damn grateful for it. It meant he mostly just had to deal with an obscene amount of duel challenges he found himself unable to turn away.

But then there was that stupid legend.

Everyone liked to talk about it, to whisper about the Striders being bastard children, not born with the worth of the name Lalonde, because of some lame ghost story about the House.

The House, of course, was the old mansion on Slaughter Hill, which had, at one point, been in Strider-Lalonde hands. And that, the fact that it had once been theirs, only fueled the chatter’s fire. Which meant that he had to deal with it day in and day out; it just wasn’t like a student of the arcane to let die a rich piece of gossip that might put into question the blood purity of another.

Sure, they weren’t blood-purist at the S4. _Suuuure._ The administration may not have been, but the students certainly were. The trolls were worse than the humans in that respect.

Dave, however, didn’t hate his mother. In fact, he was definitely what you would call a mama’s boy. He adored his mother, but he had to wonder. And often. He had to wonder why his mother would give her sons, the name-bearers and power-holders of the family, a name that reeked of non-magical blood. It was something that he’d never really been able to accept. It was frustrating, constantly being in question like that.

It brought up thoughts that traced along the lines of _“What if my family is a bastard bloodline,”_ and _“Who was our father and why does the name we have (if that guy from the house is even related to us which is totally not likely) connect with a purely human murder”._ You know. Stupid little niggling thoughts like that. The kinds that were totally unfounded and filled with lies.

Like all those dreams he had, where he left their dorm through its window, a fiery bird’s wings stretching and carrying him away… Dreams were all full of lies, but they were so vivid… He could swear sometimes that he had actually lived them, when that was just not even remotely possible. He wasn’t a were; he couldn't turn into a bird.

He was just staring at the mirror now, deep in his own mind. The eye that wasn’t beaten to hell was dark, pupil blown wide in his stressed thinking. He was entranced with the deep red sliver of the eye on the injured side of his face, reaching out to tap his fingers against the reflective surface of the glass before him.

“Dave. Dave, you’re doing that thing again,” Karkat said, coming over and resting his  hand on the other’s shoulder, snapping him out of it. “We’re gonna be late to breakfast if you don’t finish getting ready to go.”

“Nah,” Dave shot back, sliding on his shades and then looking around his cluttered side of the room for where he’d tossed his uniform blazer after last night’s off-the-books, after-hours fight. “We won’t be late.”

Karkat gestured to an artifact they co-owned − a chair − of bright cherry wood, inlaid with a sparkling ruby. “Yeah, okay. I guess you’re right.” With this thing, it was practically impossible to be late anywhere. It had been painstakingly crafted by the redhead in Dorm 4 of Hawthorne Tower; Dave (with a few tips from his brothers) had helped her and her roommate there by chasing out a ghoul in their creepy-ass cemetery.

Who was even able to calibrate a dormitory into a cemetery?

But, regardless of the origin, the chair was useful as shit, and pretty much guaranteed Dave and Karkat’s arrival to just about anywhere they could firmly picture in their minds. At least, anywhere they had ever been before. Mapping of the mind and all that.

Karkat went first, sitting on the chair and focusing a moment before he disappeared  completely, the ruby in the chair glowing brightly.

Then Dave sat, thinking about the breakfast table he always sat at, about the food, his friends, and sketched up as many details as his brain could conjure about the large dining room where everyone ate.

There was a sensation as though he were melting, and then he was at the table, his ears suddenly assaulted by noise and his nose by smells.

Perfect.

"Morning," Dave said, looking around at everyone at the usual table. John, as usual, sat in the shadows, and was working on a hearty plate of bacon and eggs (along with a small mountain of iron supplements), and to his immediate right, Jade was eating something that looked particularly raw. Then Karkat, having just materialized beside her, set his menu card back on his plate, and got busy waiting for his chosen breakfast to appear.

A ways away, he could see his brother's irritating haircut, and the huddle that comprised his inner circle of friends. The four meddling kids and their dog.

Jake seemed to be gesturing to something he had on, but the youngest Strider couldn't make it out. He wondered what they were talking about, briefly, as the morning's menu card appeared on his plate, but then turned his attention to his own table's business.

They're probably talking about ghosts or something stupid like that, he thought, and then traced his finger over the steak option on the card.

It was never too early for steak.

−−−−

"God, it's _way_ too early for steak," Dirk said, tracing his finger over the option for crêpes. "Unless you're Roxy Lalonde."

Roxy grinned and responded, "Ya know me so well!" Her steak, well done, materialized on her plate, and Jake nudged Jane with a laugh, laying the meatier half of his meal on the ground for Buddha to eat. "I guess you were the only one listening!"

"Probably." The girl remarked, pushing an iron supplement past pearly fangs and gulping it back with orange juice. "So have you made contact with him again since?"

"Not since I took this bone, no, but sometimes it warms a bit, so I know he's still curled up in there!" Jake responded, indicating the bone that hung around his neck now. "Derrick is probably hanging out; I haven't let him into my body yet."

Dirk's crêpes had appeared, and he was well over half-done with the first. He chewed and swallowed rapidly, his appetite immense, and then paused, setting his fork and knife down. "Yeah, would you be careful with that when it happens? And maybe... You mentioned his surname was Strider. And he was in the house. Murdered. I owe you about forty pounds of favors, but I need another one."

"Dirk." Roxy's voice was quiet, and he shook his head, immediately overriding his sister.

"I need to know. We need to. Mom never remarried; all of us, by her powers, have the same father. And she tacked the last name Strider on all her sons. So this is our chance to investigate. Jane, you're in Archives, right?"

"Sometimes, on study days. I'm in Magical Law, and sometimes, on our colder cases, we have to search the Archives." The vampire remarked, forking a piece of ham into her mouth. "If you're looking at having me peruse any papers or detect any documents, I regret to inform you that it carries a cost."

" _Jane._ " Dirk said, and Jane sighed. "Dirk, I was trying to be professional. You know it's free for you. I'll do what I can."

Dirk opened his mouth to speak, floundered like a fish, then returned silently to his food. Perfectly manicured nails pinched at his cheek lovingly, and Jane ceased teasing him soon after that.

There was nothing for a while, then. Between the graceful way that Jane swallowed her supplements between bites of her breakfast,  the houndish way Roxy and Buddha worked through their respective meats, and the almost frantic way Dirk tore into his crêpes, Jake found himself, hands on the table, in a sort of… smooth state of bliss. It was difficult to explain, but made sense nonetheless to one of a medium’s persuasion.

He could feel everything at the table, the past and present, and it all melted together for him. He'd gotten used to the sensations of simultaneous feelings, and though it took him some effort, he’d gotten to a point where he could isolate the origins of each feeling and estimate its existence in time.

While he was busy tracing back a thin string of irritation to Jane, there was a sudden warmth at his throat, and a rumbling voice became audible only to him.

_“Th’hell am I?”_

“Derrick!” Jake exclaimed aloud, startling everyone at the table and breaking his own concentration. Roxy was the first to recover, and, waving her hands excitedly, she said around a mouthful of steak, “Oh m’God, he’s talkin’ t’you!” Jane leaned forward, briefly sucking her fangs as she did when she was nervous, and Dirk’s hand slid under the table to his hip for his quick vial of holy water, just in case of anything.

“Derrick… You’re in your bone, and in me, kind of? It’s a long story, but you aren’t in the house anymore.” The medium murmured. “Just… let me get through the school day here. Then we can talk about our... relationship. Perhaps more privately?”

A bit of a silence about the table, with Dirk covering his mouth to try and muffle a snort while Jane coughed to cover a laugh. Roxy was far less tactful, sniggering obviously and still working away on that steak of hers, which Dirk was stealing pieces of, because goddamn it, he was still hungry.

_“A’right. That wordin’ was weird an’ surreal as all get out. Are we on a dinner date. Am I buyin’.”_ The tone was playful, but confused all the same.

“Breakfast date, on me. Sorry. I have something of a wild tongue, if you will, and sometimes what I say is humorous to people, but I’m going to have to say that it just flies over my head.” The young medium admitted, frowning at his laughing friends.

_“Why th’hell is it so noisy? Where are ya? I mean. Where am I? Uh. Us. We?”_

“We,” Jake affirmed smoothly, “are in the dining hall of the S4 in the city of Ruin. I go to school here! And so do my friends. We can work all this out later, I promise; I wasn’t expecting you to come to while I was here. Or to attune so quickly to my senses… It’s all a bit sudden!”

Dirk’s brows arched up, and there was an unclipping sound as he pulled his quick vial free of his belt and placed it by Jake, who tucked it into his blazer’s inner pocket.

_“Somethin’ wrong? Ya seem uneasy or... Nevermind, jus’ me bein’ ghostly, I bet.”_

“That’s possible. But, in other news, I had best scoot my boots off to class before I’m tardy. My Medicinal Magics professor does not take kindly to those on exam days.”

Dirk groaned. “Shit, that was today.” Jake immediately retorted, “Yes, well, you’ve got the purple schedule, so that puts it after lunch for you. You can at least reread the material during your Religious Studies class or maybe during Maths, Mr. Exorcist. God forbid you read during Demonology. Those of us on the gold schedule that have to take that class have it first hour.”

Getting his bag, Jake got up and said goodbye to his friends, beginning the long walk out to the building where he took his first class.

Roxy, as he left, popped a bottle out of her sylladex, then handed it to Dirk, who threw it out the window in the direction of her next class. With a shattering sound, she was gone, and Jake grumbled, “Dang these witches and their travel spells.”

_“Witches? Those exist?”_ A bit of a pause there, and Derrick heaved a sigh that sounded a bit like a murmured “idiot”, _“Why th’fuck am I askin’; m’dead an’ still ‘round. ‘Course they exist.”_

“Right. I’m a mystic, if you would like to be general, but I specialize in mediumship. Which is why we’re chattering so nicely now! What about you? Were you magical at all in your lifetime?”

_“Pulled a rabbit outta hat once. S’that count?”_ Another break in the speech. _“I’unno, m’Mama always said I had a spark. God if I know what th’fuck that means.”_

“I don’t think that qualifies, but nice try.” Jake said with a smile, walking past a crowd of people and then taking the stairs into a building covered in plants, going up two at a time. Sliding into a seat upon reaching the classroom, he pulled out a pen and pencil, then set his bag under the seat and shifted his mindset into his testing “zone”.

The tests were handed out, and they began at the bell, the room quieting down to nothing more than stressed breathing and the scratch of writing utensils.

Scrawling his name up on the top of his page to appear busy, Jake bent to the first question. “Alright, so it’s… God, what were the applications of bitterblue herb again?”

_“Ya can eat th’plant an’ th’root, make tea from th’flowers, make it into oil ya can put on stuff, smoke the leaves, an’ m’pretty sure ya can crunch th’seeds for an effect like a painkiller.”_

“How do you know that?” Jake breathed quietly so no one would hear.

_“Read it in an old book m’gran used t’keep layin’ ‘round th’house.”_

Silence, for a moment, then.

“How much more information was in that book?”

_“Aw, fuck, so much I had t’reread it. I didn’t even know what bitterblue was, but we had this patch out’n th’field. Tasted great with goat cheese. Stem’s bitter as fresh cacao, but th’rest s’actually kinda sweet?”_ Derrick remarked, and Jake tapped his pencil on the page, mumbling, “What about sky alder?”

There was silence, and then a hum as Derrick tried to recall, then he said, _“Sky alder bark is edible an’ it’s got an effect kinda like coffee. Leaves are straight up poison; eat one of those suckers an’ your heart’ll freak out an’ pump itself t’death ‘cause of how much caffeine is in every one of those.”_

“Leaf appearance?”

_“Three an’ a half inches. Smooth, glossy, dark green, with a funny sorta triangular shape. Looks like s’gonna poke out your goddamn eye.”_

Jake smiled despite himself.

Last night’s venture had proven a hell of a lot more fruitful than studying would have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> question? comments? please ask or tell!
> 
> Comments are needed. Feed the Aube.
> 
> bonus pieces  
> on the origin of magics: (not yet posted)  
> the med magics test: (not yet posted)

**Author's Note:**

> questions? comments? kudos? please leave all those babies right here at the end! see ya next chapter, yeah?
> 
> Enjoy yourselves in the mean time, or something to that effect.


End file.
